The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past & Four Swords -- For GBA

This game is to put it simply; a masterpiece.  It isn't perfect, but for the time, it was one of the greatest in regard to it's story, graphics, sound, simplicity, gameplay, and it's post game experience.

The basic plot is that you're a young boy in the land of Hyrule named Link.  Princess Zelda somehow telepathically tells you that she's trapped in a dungeon and she needs to be rescued.  You rescue her, you discover that some wizard named Agahnim is trying to free Ganon (The equivalent of Bowser) using the Seven Sages.  The only weapon that can defeat Agahnim is the Master Sword but before you can get the Master Sword; you have to get 3 magical pendants to prove your worthiness.  You get the Master Sword and defeat Agahnim but you're still only a third of the way through the game.  Then you have to go to the Dark World (Which is just an alternate version of Hyrule) and rescue the daughters of the Seven Sages (since they're already long dead).  You upgrade your Master Sword, learn the Spin Attack, fight Agahnim again, and finally... you face off against Ganon: an evil giant magic trident wielding pig with a cape.  He's also bipedal.

In summation, this game is pretty long.  The world map is huge (almost to the scale of Pokemon) and the fact that there's two of them (Light and Dark World) makes traversing through the game a chore.  Thankfully, there are ways for you to move around faster in the game (Running with the Pegasus boots, and calling on a bird to carry you around to specific points).  There are also many different dungeons.

What I'm playing is a port for the Game Boy Advance from the original on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).  Despite this, the game still holds well for something that was released almost 20 years ago.  The colors are very vibrant (kind of Super Mario World-esque) and the music's just great.  Some of the soundtracks were popular enough to be remixed into certain parts of Super Smash Brother's Brawl.  I got this game without any instructions from a used GBA cabinet at Gamestop.  I was also able to play this as soon as I left the store.  It was that easy to learn.  I value that "Pick up and Play" aspect of the game.  That's why they call it a game.


The gameplay is rich and entertaining.  There's nothing like slashing at a monster, charging into a whole group with a sword at the ready, and annihilating an entire mob of them with one item.  There are an impressive amount of items.  Just look at it.

And keep in mind that more items were included in the GBA port such as 3 more jars and a shovel.  Along with the standard items of any LoZ game (Bow and Arrows, Boomerang, Hookshot, Bombs, etc..) there are some new ones like the elemental wands, the magic medallions, 2 magic staffs, a magic mirror (to switch between worlds), jars (to hold potions or fairies), Pegasus boots, power gloves, swim flippers, sword, shield, chain mail, etc...  Using some of these items depletes a magic meter that Link has so it's not possible to spam without some form of punishment.  Regardless, it just gives you so many options.  Mario had at best only 3 or so power ups.


Dungeons are a staple of all games in the series.  There are rooms upon rooms of unique puzzles, traps, enemies, and treasures.  The recurring theme is that you find an important item in the dungeon and you use that item to get through the rest of it to the boss.  The boss's weakness normally just happens to be the most recent item you found in his dungeon.  Despite this, they were still a challenge.  Here I was, playing a video game that was older than I was, and I was still impressed with the quality of the boss fights and their designs (and occasionally getting my ass whupped).

The Light and Dark World feature is an integral part of the story.  First of all, they're not all that different, the only differences being that the Dark World is a distorted version of the Light World.  They're practically the same shape with similar enemies.  The differences are that the enemies are stronger, they have a different appearance, and some obstacles have been radically changed (a bridge in the Light World might be broken in the Dark World).  The keys to finishing this game are the Moon Pearl and the Magic Mirror.  Moon Pearl allows you to keep your form in the Dark World (not having the Moon Pearl in the Dark World turns you into a helpless rabbit), and the Magic Mirror allows you to switch from the Light World to the Dark World (to go back, you have to enter a portal which normally pops up from the ground where you materialized).  The two worlds are intertwined so certain actions in one world can affect another which then allows you to advance further in the game.

There are a whole lot of things to do even after completion of the game.  You could spend hours just running around Hyrule.  There are heart containers and heart pieces (1/4th of a heart container) to collect.  Containers normally come as a reward for defeating a boss but they can also be found in minigames found around the over world.  The pieces tend to be the most difficult to collect seeing as how they're always hidden and that there are 24 of them.  You can also upgrade some of your items, like your shield for more reflective capabilities, chain mail for more defense, sword for attack power (with projectile capabilities at full health), power glove to lift heavier items, boomerang for more range, and bow/arrows for a key part of the game.  You could even explore the area to find fairy fountains that acted as rest stops to restore all your health or as a place to increase your ammo for certain items.  There was even a potion that doubled your magic meter.  I found these to be incredibly useful.  

I do have some gripes about this game though.  For one thing, some of the puzzles are just way too hard to figure out.  I noticed that I had to rely on trial and error a lot more often than my brain for some of them.  How would anybody know that some of the blocks in a certain room were pushable?  Who would have the patience to check every block in the game?


Some of the heart pieces, I noticed were very out of the way.  You would have to do something incredibly specific to find all of them.  I had to use a walkthrough to find every heart piece in the game and I got to tell you, it still wasn't easy.  You had to switch back from Light World to Dark World (sometimes back) in very specific locations.  Unless you were going to check every single pixel in the game, I doubt this was something doable by the average joe.


Some of the other stuff was a little cryptic too.  How could anybody know that you could get an upgraded item by throwing it away into a fountain?  My first instinct would have been "Hell no, I'm not throwing away my boomerang."


After a little research, I realized this game was originally made in 1991.  During this time, the internet was still trying to take a foothold and there were no strategy guides available through the web.  Game designers loved to put cryptic stuff into the game.  Why?  So that gamers would be forced to look for ways to keep going on in the game.  Back then, Nintendo Power was the only way you could get a 100 percent playthrough.  If you didn't purchase a subscription, have a best bud who did, or a local library with the latest editions; you were left in the dust.  Other examples of games like these are Metroid, Super Mario Bros, Castlevania, Contra, etc... Basically, anything with a cheat code or hidden area. 

If you had the patience to read through all that, then hats off to you.  Overall, despite the cryptic nature of some portions of the game, it doesn't really take that much from the whole gaming experience.  After all, you could justify it by saying that nobody really get's 100 percent completion in Zelda, only die hard nerds do that.  Well, the jokes on me.  Overall, I say that if you manage to get your hands on one of these; I highly recommend that you check it out.  It's well worth your time.


Note: I'm aware that there was a second game that came with the cartridge, but I found this to be unusable seeing how you needed at least two players (link cable and all) to play the game.  If you did manage to complete the game however, it would have triggered an event in A Link to the Past where you would have been able to access a bonus dungeon.  To my knowledge, this dungeon is incredibly difficult to defeat with an enhanced version of four of the dark world bosses.  After each boss fight, you gain a colored sword.  After collecting all four swords and entering the final boss room, you fight four versions of yourself, with the difficulty amplifying after  each clone's defeat.  Killing the final Link will trigger a secret cutscene showing all the enemies, bosses, and their names, respectively.